Google Gives 15,000 Raspberry Pi Computers To UK Schools

Posted by Nathan Kirsch| Tue, Jan 29, 2013 - 2:32 PM

Google has announced that it will donate 15000 Raspberry Pi computers to British schoolchildren to encourage software coding lessons in the classroom! The partnership was announced at Chesterton Community College in Cambridge, where children were given a coding lesson by Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt and Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton. The £22 Raspberry Pi computer was introduced last February. The Raspberry Pi runs versions of the Linux operating system – stored on an SD card – and by default supports Python, which is seen as a good programming language for novices to tackle. Any other language compatible with the ARM architecture can be used, however. Google and Raspberry Pi said they would work together with six educational partners in the UK including Codeclub, Computing At School, Generating Genius, Coderdojo, Teach First and OCR. Each will be supplied with the Raspberry Pi computers. Sounds better than the Apple IIe that I grew up on in the 1980’s! The Apple IIe had a 1.023MHz processor and was a beast!

“We’re going to be working with Google and six UK educational partners to find the kids who we think will benefit from having their very own Raspberry Pi. CoderDojo, Code Club, Computing at Schools, Generating Genius, Teach First and OCR will each be helping us identify those kids, and will also be helping us work with them. You’ll already have seen the Raspberry Pi teaching materials from Computing at Schools; OCR will also be creating 15,000 free teaching and learning packs to go with the Raspberry Pis.”